Kenyon coolly followed up the shot, and the repeaters fairly opened a lane in the approaching crowd, who fired wildly into the bush without doing any serious damage, and in another moment, to the number of about twenty, were busy scrambling up the rock, whilst Leigh, Grenville and Kenyon emptied rifle and revolver into their ranks at point-blank range. Suddenly Leigh heard another well-remembered voice. “Let my father,” it said, “give Amaxosa a little space, that the child of the Undi may revenge himself, and slay these evil-minded men;” and moving to one side, Leigh saw his oft-tried comrade-in-arms, the proud young Zulu chief, walk coolly to the very verge of the platform, with a mighty mass of rock poised in his powerful arms. For one brief instant he stood thus, while his keen eye played over the hated forms of his late masters; then with a wild, earth-shaking shout he plunged the enormous missile right into the midst of the enemy where they were most closely massed together, bearing them backwards to the ground a bleeding, senseless pulp of human flesh and bones.
The revolvers quickly accounted for the few men who were left alive, and a minute later the re-united cousins, led by Kenyon, and followed by their triumphant “Impi,” were descending the rock on its outer side, and making for the friendly cover of the forest, their only loss being one Zulu, who was shot through the body, and whom necessity compelled them to leave behind at the point of dissolution.
A hasty consultation ensued when the whole party had reached the forest, and both Leigh and Kenyon heard, with unmixed satisfaction, that the enemy would be under the necessity of following directly upon their trail, there being absolutely no path by which he could get round or cut off the retreat of the fugitives. Grenville also added that his friends had come in a fortunate hour, for had Zero himself been present, or had Crewdson Walworth not fallen so early in the fray, all would have had their work cut out to get away from the enclosure with whole skins. So weak were the late captives, that travelling was of necessity very slow indeed, or at least it seemed so to men fleeing with the knowledge that re-capture meant prompt and certain death.
Owing to the villainous treatment he had received, poor Grenville was in a pitiable state, but after a twenty minutes’ rest, during which his cousin fed him with biscuits steeped in brandy, he made another effort, and Kenyon having speeded on ahead, and chased down their bearers with a hammock, the party soon had Grenville safely and comfortably housed in their temporary lodging on the mountain side.
Here the rescued one assured them that the whole band might safely lie hidden for a day or two during Zero’s absence, as both white and black slavers held the spot in superstitious veneration on account of the presence of the old hermit—for some such thing Grenville declared their mad friend of the morning to be. Half priest he was, half doctor, and partly recluse. Grenville knew naught of him beyond the fact that he had occupied his present location, and been looked up to by the natives as a species of god, long years before ever Zero and his following of scoundrels overran the country side. For his simple necessities he received weekly supplies at the hands of the surrounding negro chiefs, who held him to be the greatest fetish in the land, and believed that he could kill or cure them, ruin their crops, or give them rain and fruitful seasons at his will; not that he, poor old man, had ever attempted to inoculate them with any such belief, having, on the contrary, always treated them as kindly as if they were his own children. To Grenville he had been extremely good, and had seemed much impressed with him, because our friend hod once again refused to buy his life at the prohibitive price of an introduction into the Mormon brotherhood.
Kenyon had tried to give Grenville in few words the history of his cousin’s bereavement, fearing that a natural, yet abrupt, inquiry after Lady Drelincourt would greatly distress poor Leigh. The detective found, however, to his astonishment, that Grenville was in possession of full particulars of the cowardly double murder, Zero having boasted to him of the commission of the deed as a meritorious action, performed in revenge for the doings of their own party in East Utah. The slaver-chieftain had, it appeared, possessed himself of the persons of Grenville and of Amaxosa and some thirty of his warriors, by a skilfully-executed night attack, in which he was supported by upwards of three hundred armed whites and a horde of natives.
The story of the captives after this date was written in letters of torture and of blood, and when his cousin, to try him, asked Grenville how soon he would be in condition to turn his face homewards, the old spirit blazed out once more, as he vowed by all he held sacred that he would never leave the locality until Zero and his villainous following were completely wiped out and stamped flat, even did he know that his own life would in consequence be forfeited.
Needless to say, both Leigh and Kenyon heard these determined expressions with undisguised satisfaction, for these two had already come secretly to a like unanimous decision, and being now assisted by Grenville, with his perfect local knowledge, and backed by several white men, in addition to the redoubtable Amaxosa and a score of his picked warriors, who only required a few days of rest and good food to fit them for anything at all in the fighting line, both men felt much more sanguine of accomplishing the end they had in view, and of meting out stern retributive justice to the villainous slavers, and the double-dyed murderer who acted as their chief.
Asked to relate how he had executed the hieroglyphic upon the face of the rock within the kloof, Grenville explained that he had been bound at the “tail-end” of a line of half-a-dozen Zulus, and thrown upon the ground at the very edge of the cliff, whilst the slavers were bringing up the rest of their wretched captives by moonlight, and getting a sharp stone in his fettered hands, he had hung, head-downwards, suspended over the gulf in perfect safety, knowing that the weight of the men above would be a sheet-anchor for him. To Grenville’s dismay, however, he found, when his work was done, that he could not regain his position on the rock, and just as he was losing consciousness with the rush of blood to his head, he was rescued by the slavers, who flogged him soundly for what they took to be a deliberate attempt to rob them of his valued person by the committal of cold-blooded suicide.
Cautious as ever, Grenville could not be persuaded to rest or sleep until he had seen Leigh and Amaxosa on guard, and had warned Kenyon to relieve the Zulu chief in two or three hours, as the poor fellow had had, he said, an uncommonly rough time of it lately, and the diabolical and senseless ill-usage to which he had been subjected, must have told its tale upon even his iron constitution.